Volunteering in the Community Development Department these past two months has brought to life the struggles that several sugarcane working communities in Nicaragua are facing every day. Working hands-on with community members that have been directly impacted by the epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of nontraditional causes (CKDu) has really made this public health and human [...]
[mk_page_section attachment="scroll" bg_position="left top" bg_repeat="repeat" bg_stretch="false" enable_3d="false" speed_factor="4" bg_video="no" video_mask="false" video_opacity="0.6" top_shadow="false" section_layout="full" min_height="100" full_height="false" padding_top="10" padding_bottom="10" margin_bottom="0" first_page="true" last_page="true"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text disable_pattern="true" align="left" margin_bottom="0"]My time working for La Isla Foundation is coming to an end. I have been working here for almost two and a half months and have only a couple of weeks left. [...]
When I first met Doña Ismara Granados, all I had been told was that she had a story to tell. We sat outside Ismara's casita in northern Chichigalpa, chickens and taxis passing us in turns. She began by relating her husband’s death. The details are too gruesome to print here, but it should suffice to [...]
By Katelyn Colwell “Chinandega, Chinandega, Chinandega!” The middle-aged Nicaraguan man cries while he needlessly holds my arm and I take my first step onto the old bus. I hold my breath as I walk up the worn-out stairs for the first time – I try not to inhale the foul air of the bus terminal [...]
“It’s beautiful for them to learn how to prepare the land,” Paula Mercedes Cheves Ruiz said. Last month Cheves Ruiz donated to La Isla Foundation a 25’ x 25’ plot of land from her property in La Isla, Nicaragua. La Isla Foundation volunteers and community members till the earth. The land will serve [...]
My whole life my mom always told me I would be a lawyer, and my whole life I struggled with the notion of actually becoming one. Despite my best efforts, last year I found myself in law school. After my first year, I think I was still shell-shocked at the idea of being an attorney. [...]
A few weeks ago, I went with the La Isla Public Health team to accompany two nurses on a home visit to a patient on peritoneal dialysis treatment. In Nicaragua, peritoneal dialysis (PD) is the only viable option for many patients with end-stage kidney failure from chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the quality and outcomes [...]
In Nicaragua, August marks the mid-point of el invierno - the rainy season - where almost daily, brief and tropical downpours break the humid air and soak the verdant landscape. More summer than winter, despite the name, by November the rain will give way to hotter, drier temperatures, just as sugarcane workers return to the [...]
My relationship with the victims of CKDu started around the same time Jason Glaser’s (co-founder of La Isla Foundation) did, but across the border in Costa Rica. In 2009, during my freshman year of high school, my family and I lived near San Jose, Costa Rica. While living there, I grew especially close to one [...]
We walked around for two hours in the dust, in the staggering heat, amongst a throng of other people all walking the same creeping pace. “It feels like being in a zombie movie,” I remember thinking to myself. But everyone was there willingly, to pay their last respects to a treasured community leader, father, husband, [...]
